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Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Who Moved My Cheese?

Erev Rosh Hashanah

Who Moved My Cheese?

Rabbi Alan Cook

September 24, 2014

Sinai Temple, Champaign, IL

In
1801, a Calvinist pastor named John Leland convinced his fellow citizens in
Cheshire, Massachusetts to join in creating a gift for President Thomas
Jefferson: all those in his congregation who owned cows were asked to bring one
gallon of milk each to a central location in town where it was used to produce
a cheese that was four feet wide, fifteen inches thick, and weighed 1,234
pounds.It was so large, in fact, that
it inspired the first known use of the word “mammoth” as an adjective.It was transported via sleigh to the White
House, where it was presented to Jefferson on New Year’s Day 1802, inscribed
with the Jeffersonian motto, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

Jefferson
accepted the gift, and kept it on display in his White House for more than two
years.It was featured in a public
dinner for the Fourth of July in 1803, and people had other opportunities to
enjoy the cheese before it was apparently either fully consumed or discarded. [1]

Not
to be outdone, supporters of Andrew Jackson in 1835 sent him a 1,400 pound
block of cheddar that was left over from a fair in Oswego, New York.By 1837, as Jackson prepared to leave office,
a considerable amount of the cheese still remained, and Jackson did not wish to
arrange for its transport to the Hermitage in Nashville, where he would be
retiring.So, he arranged for the White
House to be opened to the public.Within
two hours, over 10,000 visitors had devoured the entire block.[2]

Writer-Producer
Aaron Sorkin bolstered the image of the Jacksonian cheese when he made
reference to it on the television show “The West Wing.”The Bartlet administration adopts the idea of
an open White House as a way of allowing some of the issues that might not
otherwise come to the fore an opportunity to make their voices heard.As Chief of Staff Leo McGarry explains, “President
Andrew Jackson in the main foyer of his White House had a big block of cheese.
The block of cheese was huge—over two tons—and it was there for any and all who
might be hungry. Jackson wanted the White House to belong to the people, so
from time to time, he opened his doors to those who wished an audience. It is
in the spirit of Andrew Jackson that I, from time to time, ask senior staff to
have face-to-face meetings with those people representing organizations who
have a difficult time getting our attention. I know the more jaded among you
see this as something rather beneath you. But I assure you that listening to
the voices of passionate Americans is beneath no one, and surely not the people's
servants."[3]

So why are blocks of cheese, 19th
century presidents, and old television dramas relevant to today?Well, the motive for the original cheese
being sent to Jefferson had little to do with showing off the dairy products of
the Bay State.Reverend Leland had
supported Jefferson in the election of 1800 in the face of fears from his
congregation that Jefferson would curb the religious freedoms that had allowed
the Calvinists to find safe haven in the U.S.The present was meant to thank Jefferson and secure the relationship
between the president and the various American Protestant streams.In Jackson’s time, the cheese shifted from
being a symbol of religious freedom to a symbol of the people having open access
to their elected officials.Though
Sorkin took some liberties in explaining Jackson’s actions and motives, his
re-imagining of the event is consistent with Jackson’s efforts to cast himself
as a populist president.Just about the
only resident of Washington, D.C. who was not enamored of that big block of
cheese was Jackson’s Vice President and successor, Martin Van Buren, who had to
rid the White House of the stench of a huge, two-year-old block of cheddar![4]

The issue of religious freedom and how our government
responds to the rights and concerns of individuals has garnered significant
attention lately, thanks to some decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and events
unfolding on the national stage.We
won’t attempt to resolve things over a two-ton block of cheddar (though it
might make for an interesting oneg),
but it is worthy of consideration in light of its meaning and implication for
American Jews.

On June 30, the court announced its decision in
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, a case that was closely watched by many all across the
religious spectrum.The Burwell in this
case was Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services, who argued
that the provisions of the Affordable Care Act- colloquially known as
“Obamacare”- required Hobby Lobby (and their co-plaintiffs, Conestoga Wood
Products) to provide contraceptives to their employees.The Green family, an evangelical Christian
family that owns Hobby Lobby, and the Hahn family, the Mennonite family that
owns Conestoga, claimed that such a requirement violated their religious
beliefs and was therefore illegal under both the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act of 1993 and the first amendment protections of religious freedom afforded
by the U.S. constitution.

As a religious person,
and one whose livelihood is dependent upon the continued opportunity to freely
practice my faith, I become gravely concerned when issues of religious freedom
come before the court.Whose faith will
be protected?Whose religious expression
will be preserved?What impact will be
felt by those who have pursued alternate paths to religious understanding and
truth?If we believe that our Founding
Fathers were truly devoted to the protection of free exercise, then it must be
extended not only to those who hold to so-called Judeo-Christian values, but
also to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, as well as to agnostics and
Atheists. As Thomas Jefferson noted in
his first inaugural address, “All, too, will bear in mind
this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to
prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority
possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which
would be oppression.”[5]

I’m not a constitutional scholar by
any stretch of the imagination.But over
the years, I’ve followed enough court decisions to know that oftentimes the
debate amongst the justices comes down to how one reads the constitution.The nine men and women of the nation’s
highest court have been tasked with deciding how each case before them relates
to the original intent of the framers of our nation’s foundational document.

For Jews, our foundational document
is not a constitution, but rather a Torah.And for progressive Jews who seek to marry tradition with modernity, we
vary in the degree of authority that we allow Torah to exert in legislating our
behavior.But that very interpretation,
what more than one modern theologian has called “informed choice” – whereby we
explore the full compliment of laws and precepts in the Torah and adopt into
our lives those which best bring us meaning and elevate our personal
spirituality—that interpretation is based on the principle of trying to figure
out the original intent of the framer (or framers) of the Torah.This is a process that has been going on
throughout Jewish history, beginning with the work of our prophets and
continuing through the Talmudic period right up to today.

I believe that we do great harm to
the Torah and to the constitution when we view them as fixed texts that are
meant to be read in their most literal sense.Rather, I think that we should understand both as living documents that
must be applied and reinterpreted in every age.As Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater writes, “in interpreting text for today,
we are called upon to use our own minds, hearts and experiences to understand
and apply meaning. Just as the Constitution didn't know from healthcare,
military drones, the internet or globalized commerce, and so lawyers and judges
must figure out how to legislate on these matters based on what they think the
intent of the framers was, along with later precedent and case law, so too the
Torah didn't know from many of the cultural and religious issues facing us
today in modern American life: from end of life decisions that involve modern
medicine to using technology to bring Shabbat services to homebound seniors… We
have changed, evolved, moved as a society and culture, even if some don't
agree.”[6]

To cast Rabbi Grater’s assertion
in a slightly different light, consider the Torah selection that we will read
on Yom Kippur morning.This passage,
which was read just last week as part of Parashat Nitzavim, speaks of Torah’s
accessibility to all who would seek to understand its messages.“Lo
bashamayim hi,”[7] Moses proclaims.Torah is not in the heavens, that we must
send someone skyward to retrieve it for us.Indeed, lo bashamayim hi
became a mantra of sorts for later generations of rabbis, who used this phrase
to argue that we were subject to the spirit of its laws, but not always to the
letter of them.God had shaped the
framework of the Torah to provide us moral and ritual guidelines for our lives,
they posited, but then had left it in the hands of humanity to apply its precepts
to everyday living.

The way I choose to apply
said principles to my life decisions most likely will differ in at least some
manner from the way you apply them to your life.While that’s fine in the arena of religious
practice, it becomes incredibly problematic when we are talking about a legal
system.In order to maintain a just and
democratic society, the laws and precepts of the constitution, and the
subsequent layers of interpretation, must have equal applicability to all
Americans.Since these two approaches-
the guidance of Torah (or other sacred texts) and the guidance of the
constitution (and other legal documents of this country)- are often at odds
with one another, ultimately someone must determine where the public sphere
ends and the private sphere begins.

This, to me, is what
makes the Hobby Lobby case, Citizens United, and so many other recent decisions
by the Roberts court so troubling: that line between public and private
sensibilities has become ever murkier.Love it or hate it, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land.If the law conflicts with your private faith,
then perhaps there are workarounds that will protect your right to free
exercise of your religion—indeed, Health and Human Services suggested possible
adjustments to the contraception provision that troubled the Green family.Your faith does not make you a protected
class that can tread upon the rights and opportunities of others.

If an employee requires kosher or halal food, or permission to wear a headcovering in the workplace,
or the opportunity to take a break from the workday to engage in prayer, the
employer can and should make reasonable accommodations to allow for such
practices.And the employee has legal
recourse if such arrangements are not made.But the law does not (and should not) mandate that all food must be kosher, that all workers must wear kippot or turbans or hijabs, or that everyone must engage in
prayer.My expression of my faith may bridge
from the private sphere into the public sphere so long as I do not inhibit
another person’s free exercise of faith, or his or her right to abstain from
any religious affiliation at all.

To me, being religiously
free does not mean that one gets to discriminate against those who believe or
behave differently.It does not mean
that your reading of your sacred text is allowed to trump the law of the
land.

Virtually every religious
tradition or secular code of morality contains some variation on the so-called
“Golden Rule”: that we should treat others the way that we, ourselves, would
wish to be treated.All of us would do
well to heed this teaching, to spend less time worrying about our differences
and fearing or condemning the “otherness” of our neighbors.If each religious group battling for primacy
in the public sphere would focus their religious fervor on making this world a
better place, think of the great things that could be accomplished.

Hayom Harat Olam, this
is the day of the world’s creation.When, in that first burst of creative energy, God decided to create
humankind, only one creature was fashioned.This was part of a purposeful design, the rabbis teach, so that no future
person could say, “My ancestor was greater than yours.”[8]May all come to embrace this approach to
religious freedom, recognizing that though we may have sought different paths
to Truth, we share a common brotherhood and sisterhood.May we all come to sit under our vine and fig
trees, unafraid[9]- and perhaps share some
conversation over a nice piece of cheese.